Real Estate Trends – Brookline, Massachusetts

Introduction:

Welcome back again for our latest real estate market trend report. For those of you that are here for the first time what we do in these reports is examine the real estate market in a city or town in Massachusetts or New Hampshire to evaluate the current conditions. We do this by looking at the changes in three key metrics year over year for the municipality to see how the market has changed and then evaluate what those observations might mean for that market moving forward.

Market Trends in Brookline, MA – December 2014 and 2015:

The Brookline, MA market has fallen off since last year. The average prices were both down while the median prices were down significantly as well. The days on market however are down a little. Inventory was down some going from 17 sales in December of 2014 to 14 in December 2015.

Average Listing Prices:

We will first start off by looking at the average listing price. In Brookline, MA the average listing price in December 2014 was $1,913,529. This was down to $1,412,493 in December 2015. This gives a massive decrease of 26.18% year over year.

Looking at the median prices we see that they were quite a bit lower in both years. For December of 2014 the median listing price for Brookline, MA was $1,575,000 and in December 2015 it was $999,450 which now gives an even bigger decrease of 36.54%.

Average Sale Prices:

The next thing we will be looking at is the average sale prices. The average sale price for in Brookline, MA in December of 2014 was $1,970,890 and in December 2015 that was down to $1,372,964. That gives a larger 30.34% decrease compared to the average list price.

We see the same pattern with the median sale prices as we did for the listing prices with both being much lower than the averages. For December of 2014 the median sales price for Brookline, MA was $1,520,000 and in December 2015 it was $1,000,000 giving another huge decrease of 34.21%.

No matter how you look at it prices are down massively year over year in December. Best result was down over 26% by the least telling stat of average listing price. Usually more weight is given to medians and sales are far more important than listing prices so given all 3 other metrics were down over 30% it is fair to think that is closer to the floor of the price decreases. Looking further, since both medians were down a bit more than that, the 34% drop seen in the median sale price looks to be the most indicative. Since the median sale price is the most used stat in quoting real estate market trends this is not surprising.

Average Days on Market:

Finally the last metric we look at are the average days on market, which is the measure of how long it takes for a property to sell in the current market. For Brookline, MA the average days on market in December of 2014 were 47.06 and the average days on market for December 2015 were 43.14 for a small 8.33% decrease.

Brookline, Mass Summary:

The Brookline, Massachusetts real estate market is down tremendously since last year. The average prices were way down and median prices were down substantially more. The days on market are down a very small amount, which is a little surprising with such large price declines, but does little to change the conclusion of a significant decline in the market.

In summary if you are looking to sell a house in Brookline, MA now you should expect to get a lot less for it than you would have gotten last year. You should also expect it to take just a little less time to sell compared to last year as well.